


we are a thousand leagues under the sea (i cannot swim a thousand more)

by olivemartini



Series: All The Lovely Ones Have Scars [21]
Category: Iron Man - Fandom, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt Tony, Pepper's had enough, Pre-Iron Man, Pre-Relationship, poor mental health, she's trying to help him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-07
Packaged: 2019-06-06 12:02:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15194369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: "You're my assistant!"  He is three inches away from her, and then closer, so close that she could see the fear in his eyes, how terrified he was of this, of someone seeing the truth of him like she does.  "You are my assistant.  You bring me coffee, and you bring me papers to sign, and sometimes I give you a more important job because I find you to be less grating than the rest of the people that Stane sends my way, but that's where this begins and ends, do you understand?""It's easy for you, isn't it?"  She does not back down.  She does not turn away.  Whatever else she might be, Pepper is not a coward.  "You run and you run and you run and you never have to look back, do you, Mr. Stark, because you can jump from girl to girl and place to place and weapon to weapon, everything bigger and brighter with each step you take, all to blind you from the mind numbing emptiness that is your life."  She was being cruel, but so was he, and she wanted to hurt him, cut him down to size so he can feel as small as he makes everyone else.  "That's why you really keep pushing me away, isn't it, Mr. Stark, because I am the only person in your life who you care about that doesn't have to stay."





	we are a thousand leagues under the sea (i cannot swim a thousand more)

Tony's locked himself in his workshop.

And that's fine, she tries to tell herself, it really is, because it's something that he does all the time and just a sign that he's trying to catch up on work after his time in the hospital, but it's also  _not_ fine, not at all, because the last time she had come down here and checked the door and found it locked she had just walked away, and it turns out that he had been lying there the whole time, on the floor gasping for air and choking on his own vomit, and if she was wrong then, Pepper knew she could be wrong this time, too.

(He had been facing the door when she found him later, which meant that he had seen her walk over to the door, watched the shadow from where her feet were and watched her walk away again, helpless, wishing that she would find him and left with the knowledge that she wasn't even looking.)

So it's justified, this, her standing her, screaming at the wall even though Tony would not hear her and arguing with Jarvis and pounding on the door, entering entrance codes that she knows will be denied, over and over and over again, until she is choking back tears, choking on her own panic, biting down on her lip hard enough to draw blood and feeling only the slightest bit of relief when the taste of it fills her mouth, because that was a problem she could handle, that was pain she could control, that, at least, had nothing to do with the man hiding behind the door like a coward.

"I don't care if he's fine."  The words are nothing more than a murmur, but it doesn't matter, because she knows that Jarvis would be able to hear them no matter what.  She had given up on trying to break in and was waiting with her forehead pressed to the cool glass, turned opaque now that he was in privacy mode, wishing that the wall would just fall away.  "I don't care what the sensors are telling you, I don't care if he's talking to you right now, because if he stopped you from calling for help once, Jarvis, he can do it again." When she was younger, if she had been told that she would be arguing with a computer to go check on her slightly suicidal boss that she just happens to be in love with, Pepper would have laughed in their faces.  Funny how things turn out.  "Please, Jarvis."

"Miss Potts, I am afraid that I cannot do that."  He sounds sorry.  Regretful, but firm, like he wants to do this thing to make her feel better, but just can't.  "Could I relay a message?"

 _Like he would listen,_ she thinks, angry, bitter, worried to the point that she thought she was on the verge of being sick.   _Like he would ever give a damn long enough to pay attention to something I have to say._

"Yes."  She had to clear her throat in order for the words to be audible, because she was playing with something dangerous here, and also because she had finally made up her mind.  "Yes, I have a message Jarvis.  Tell him he either opens this door,"  She says, and the words are different this time, ringing with something like finality.  "Or I'm quitting."

That, those words, felt like when you have been swimming underwater for much too long and you are promising yourself only one more moment, where you break the surface of the water and it is only then that you notice how badly your lungs are burning, how horrible the pounding in your head has gotten, like a heartbeat in your temples, like she'd been holding her breath since that night keep watch over him in the hospital.

Pepper can hear the music cut off, and the door opens a second later, bringing with it an awful mixture of sweat and motor oil and Tony's cologne.

"Pepper?" She does not move her head away from the glass, partly because the cool of it feels good against her skin and also because she wants to be able to lean against something that she can trust to hold her up.  "Everything alright?"

A good assistant would say yes,  _yes sir_ and  _thank you_ and  _sorry to bother you sir_ and would have a fresh cup of coffee in her hand just to add to how wonderful she is, but Pepper is not a good assistant, has not been since she walked into his garage in the darkness and stepped in something damp and sticky, the alcohol Tony had spilled when he could not hold himself upright anymore, and then something solid, the something that was him.  She had not known what to do, just screamed for Jarvis and trusted that he was as foolproof as Tony had told her, fallen to the floor so hard she thought that her knees would have split and gathered him in her arms, cradled him and murmured that  _everything was going to be okay, Tony, it's all alright, I'm here now_ like her love for him could work some sort of magic, and watching him being taken away and loaded into the ambulance felt a bit like she was being split open.

That was the first time she thought about quitting, but the idea did not begin to form in truth until she walked into the kitchen one morning and found another empty bottle. Pepper hadn't expected it, because he had almost died, god damn it, she had cried over him and he knew it and that must have had some sort of impact, but as much as he seemed to care about her, it seemed that Tony still couldn't bear to care about himself.

And for the first time, Pepper started to think about walking away.

"No."  There was nothing to hang onto, here.  This house was all sleek walls and expensive furniture and things that she could not bring herself to touch because Pepper is constantly living in fear of breaking them.  "Are you alright, Tony?"

"Yes."  He spreads his arms out in twirls in a circle as proof.  "See, Pepper?  All fine."

"You're not."  She was crying, the tears gathering in her eyes and slipping over, and even though she was laughing it was more of a sharp note of disbelief.  "You're not fine, and I've known it, you know it, Rhodey knows it, and none of us ever say anything because we don't want to hurt your feelings, but Tony, listen to me."  She leaves the comfort of the wall and reaches to him, only to have him back a step away from her, looking like he had been slapping in the face.  "You need to get help.  That, what happened in there,"  She points a shaky finger to the garage, at the spot that is cleaner than all the rest of the floor because she had cleaned it, scrubbing and scrubbing and scrubbing like she could wash the memory away if only she tried hard enough.  Stane had made it clear that she could not call anyone, because the more people that know the more chance there is of it being leaked, so Pepper had gotten rid of all the evidence herself, scrubbing until her hands were ripped raw, the knuckles scabbed and bleeding from where they had scraped against the cement floor.  "That was your warning, your one, blessed sign that maybe, just maybe, you should take a step back and look at what you are doing to yourself."

"Don't, Pepper."  He was either pleading with her or giving an order, she could not tell.  Pepper can never tell, if she is dealing with the Tony who is her friend or the Tony who is her boss or the Tony that loves her or the Tony that needs to be taken care of, they all look so much alike that they blend together and it's just too exhausting to try and figure it out.  "Don't do this."

"I am.  I have to, Tony."  She does not want to cry, does not want to fall to her knees and beg this one thing of him, but she would, if that's what it took.  She would do anything at this point, if she thought it would keep him alive.  "Whatever you're running away from, whatever memories you're trying to drown or wash down the drain, they aren't going away,  _nothing_ is ever going to change the fact that your parents are dead or that you couldn't fit in when you were a child or the fact that all those women you run through can't love you like you want to be loved, but Tony, you're going to have to face it sometime."

 _It's time to grow up,_ she wants to say, wants to scream that in his face even though it isn't fair, but if life were fair she would not have had to go through that one heart stopping moment where she thought that he was dead before she had noticed the rise and fall in his chest, the moments where she could not track down his stuttering pulse.   _And if you have to run to anything, run to me._

"Stop it,"  He snarls, and then he's yelling, or maybe she started it, Pepper couldn't tell, the only thing she could tell is that he looked angry at her for the first time that she could remember.  "You have no right to say that, no right.   Where the hell do you get the nerve-,"

"I'm your friend!"

"You're my assistant!"  He is three inches away from her, and then closer, so close that she could see the fear in his eyes, how terrified he was of this, of someone seeing the truth of him like she does.  "You are my assistant.  You bring me coffee, and you bring me papers to sign, and sometimes I give you a more important job because I find you to be less grating than the rest of the people that Stane sends my way, but that's where this begins and ends, do you understand?"

 _Bullshit,_ she thinks, but that does not stop it from hurting, from her being ripped open all over again, and Pepper feels the fresh round of tears spring to her eyes, because yes, she understands.  Pepper thinks that she understands that better than he does, even, because it is the mantra she repeats to herself each morning and each night and every moment in between.

"It's easy for you, isn't it?"  She does not back down.  She does not turn away.  Whatever else she might be, Pepper is not a coward.  "You run and you run and you run and you never have to look back, do you, Mr. Stark, because you can jump from girl to girl and place to place and weapon to weapon, everything bigger and brighter with each step you take, all to blind you from the mind numbing emptiness that is your life."  She was being cruel, but so was he, and she wanted to hurt him, cut him down to size so he can feel as small as he makes everyone else.  "Because that's the real problem, isn't it, that this isn't the life you wanted and there is no one that you let close enough to love you unless you are certain that they cannot leave, and that's why you really keep pushing me away, isn't it, Mr. Stark, because I am the only person in your life who you care about who doesn't have to stay."  

He does not deny it, just stares, watches these words fall from her mouth and pry the two of them even further apart, but she does not stop.

"And that's alright for you.  Because you're Tony Stark, and you can do whatever the  _fuck_ you want, and you never have to look at the mess you're leaving behind you.  But guess what, Tony?  Guess who does?"  She is shaking with anger, at how unfair this all is, at how he can still point fingers at her when she has done nothing but try to hold the pieces of him together.  "Me, that's who.  It's me scheduling the meetings and me that reschedules them when you don't show up, it's me that fixes the things you break and wipes away the tears of the girls you screw, the ones you leave behind like some toy you got bored with because it didn't have enough tricks, me that makes sure you come home to sleep in your bed instead of the gutter, and that, all of that, is not my job.  I bring you coffee.  I make you sign papers.  I read off your appointments like some sort of tape recorder on legs, but none of that, Tony, was something I did because I had to.  And you know what else I did?" 

He is not saying anything, just staring at her wide eyed, like this is the steaming wreckage of some car accident that he cannot look away from.  

"Do you know,"  She repeats, louder now.  "What else I did?"

He gets the hint, then, even if his voice is nothing more than a croak.  "No."

"I found you."  Pepper is not crying anymore.  She is done with tears.  There is only so much of yourself that you can give to someone before they drain you dry.  "I found you, and you didn't think about that, me walking in and thinking that you were dead, and I did, for a whole fifty-seven seconds, because that's how long it took me to find your pulse."

"And I called the ambulance."  It took her three tries, because it was only after she had held him for a moment that she had realized Tony has disabled Jarvis and no help was coming, but her fingers were shaking so bad that she could not dial the right buttons, not even for three numbers.  "And I went back to that floor and held you until they showed up, cried over you."  She had prayed, even though she hadn't been to church since she left home, prayed to anyone that might have been listening that he would wake up or that this would all be a bad dream.  "And when it was done, I stayed here, cleaned up all your stinking, disgusting vomit and drove myself to the hospital.  And you know what I did in the morning, even though I hadn't gotten to go home and sleep?"  She paused, but this time, he does not answer.  "I went to work.  That's what normal people have to do, even when they're having a bad day.  They go to work.  And I got yelled at by Stane, because I didn't think to open the door.  So when I tell you to open the door," She lets out a shaky breath and stomps her foot just to feel the pain spike up into her heel.  It steadies her enough to keep talking.  "You open the door.  Do you understand?"

"I wasn't going to die,"  is what he comes up with him, instead of telling her that he understands.

"You have no idea."  It is her turn to spit the words at him.  "But I do.  I was there.  I saw it, and I have it burned into my mind, and you don't even have to remember it."

"I'm sorry."  He doesn't look sorry.  He looks like is in pain and like he wants to melt through the floor but he also looks like a man that is going to do it all again, just because he isn't able to stop himself.

"You should be."

"But don't quit, okay?"  He reaches out for her and now it is Pepper's turn to reach back, jerking up an arm to bat his hand away.  "Don't quit, Pepper."

"You do it again,"  She says, knowing that this time she means it, knowing that it is also probably a lie.  "I'm walking away.  I can't keep doing this to myself, Tony."

 _You can't keep doing this to yourself,_ she thinks, but does not say it, because they both amount to the same thing.

"It won't,"  He says, and this time when he holds his arms out to her she steps into him, lets herself be folded in his arms, knowing that he, too, means this, but also knowing that it is probably a lie.  "Never again."

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic


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